Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 3

Welcome back to our blog, where we discuss the game Dungeons & Babes. Oops, that's not a thing?  Well, you'd think it was from this page of Golden Knight. Because, obviously, medieval maidens went around stabbing men while dressed in modern swimsuits. I'm familiar with the phrase, "never trust a dame," but who knew dames could backstab for double damage? Is Alice a femme fatale? A D&D thief? Or just a highly effective, perhaps mid-level fighter?

Does wrecking things get easier during confusion? I don't think so, but it allowed him to act undetected. 

Then there's the concept of "saving your strength." It actually is a Hideouts & Hoodlums rule that you get +1 to hit if you take a turn to aim. What if you took an extra turn to rest for each +1 you wanted to your wrecking things roll? 

"Stay away from this fight, Alice!"

"What, are you kidding me? I just killed two guys on my way here, while you were being tortured so long your hair grew out!

"Alice! Alice! Are you hurt?"

"Well of course I'm hurt, you moron! You took my sword and left me with this little knife, and now you're not even using the shield I laid down for you!"

It turns out to be a very awkward family reunion, that Alice mortally wounded the man who turned out to be her dad.

Isn't a flying torpedo a missile? 

I like those guard uniforms. Those will be very handy for any heroes looking to knock out a guard and disguise himself as a guard!

There are real Edgewood's in Florida and Washington, but a Meadowlark Village? A real counterpart for that is proving hard to find.

Waaiiit -- the torpedo has to be controlled by a two-man crew inside it? Willingly sitting inside an armed torpedo? I may have to lower the morale save number for guards -- these guys are fearless!

"Hurry - we'll tell the Professor!"

"You know, Ted...not only couldn't the Professor figure out a way to remote control the torpedo, but he didn't even give us a portable radio to contact him with. Do you suppose we weren't meant to come out of this alive...?"

Waaaiiiiit (again). The torpedo made no noise and there was no sign of a plane -- then how does Yank follow any trajectory back to that forest? Is he just flying randomly over hundreds of square miles until he spots something that looks like a hideout? 

And really, Professor? You're planning to blow up the country, but you can't even remember to lock the front door?

A sliding panel in the floor that catches your foot sounds like the most "1st-level" trap I've ever heard of. Would that even do a point of damage? At best, if you miss your save, you can't move during combat until a turn when you do make your save.

Waaiiiit (third time) -- what's with this strange plane that just happens to look like the torpedoes that just happens to land outside in panel 1? Did the artist put panels in the wrong order somehow? It seems like even the author couldn't make sense of what was going on there.

Gee, Yank, if punching them in their helmets doesn't work, maybe you should aim somewhere else? In game, Yank's player is either rolling terrible, or those uniforms are giving a much better Armor Class bonus than I would have thought.

They didn't check to see if Yank was still alive? Classic villain blunder there. Maybe a villain should have to save vs. plot before he can check.

If the "heart of the country" is the continental geographic center of the country, then we're in Kansas, near Lebanon (or Lebanon has been renamed Edgewood). If "heart of the country" means its governmental heart, than Edgewood means Washington, D.C. -- though that doesn't make much sense (but what in this story does?).

Waiiiiittt (gah!). Yank is hitting the percussion caps on the nose of the torpedoes with a length of chain? This means the crews aren't arming the torpedoes just before bailing out, but well in advance for some reason and -- what really bugs me -- Yank's plane is somehow always able to zoom out of range just before the torpedo blows. Why is there that long a delay? Whhyyyy?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #5 - pt. 2

We're back for round 2 of Samson vs. Eelo! Although he doesn't look like your "traditional" merman, I'd already decided last time I would stat Eelo as a merman. So panel 1 is either proof that mermen have great swimming movement rate, or this is the first clue that Eelo is actually a supervillain buffed with the Race the Train power.

I've seen some interesting rayguns in golden age comic books, but an underseas gun is a new one. A heat ray shoots heat. What is this one shooting out? Underseas? Is it just a water pistol?

That is some significant wrecking going on there. A submarine weighs a couple of thousand tons, so we're talking battleship category. 

But a hero shouldn't have to do everything; eventually moping up the enemies gets to be rote, or antic-climactic. It's good, then, to have the "cavalry" come in and mop up the remainder, or the remaining sub in this case.
 

I like most of this page. Samson, stoically guarding the two reunited lovers...Eelo, almost heroically, pulling himself up for one more contest with Samson (Eelo must be a supervillain with a few more powers at his disposal, to think he has a chance here)...

And then Samson just hits him and kills him. Ugh. Death-Dealing Blow needs to be its own power. It would be more powerful than Super Punch because Super Punch just does a bunch of damage to knock out virtually any foe, whereas Death-Dealing Blow must make you save vs. plot or die. So, a level 5 power? Maybe level 6? At this point, Samson only should have enough XP to reach 2nd level, so he's either been gifted more brevet ranks, or he's had more all this time and was actually holding back.

Like with ultra-powerful magic-users in the comics, one could ask me, Scott, if superheroes are this powerful, then don't you need more power inflation in even the early levels for Hideouts & Hoodlums? Good question, random stranger, but two explanations for this: 1) the superhero class is based on the first year of Superman stories, before all this power inflation happens, and 2) there are certainly elements I don't want to emulate about the early comic books because I just don't like them. These include done-in-one-blow fights and grossly overpowered heroes.

"Mercury is getting closer to the Sun every year. Eventually it will be destroyed by the - ah, I'm just kiddin'. Mercury is in a stable orbit and is gonna outlast both of us, baby." Apparently Flip just likes to periodically test how gullible Adele is.

Now I'm being flip, but this science is so bad it actually makes me mad that anyone would write it in a book children would be reading. What if they repeated this nonsense in class?

You know...you'd think someone brilliant enough to invent a fourth-dimensional projector would figure out a way to put two separate seats into it. I suspect Flip just uses this as an excuse to get all hands-on with Adele.

I don't even know what I'm looking at with those aliens. Are they giant pigeon angels with halos? Are those beanie copters?

Darn, I was just getting excited about statting Mercurian pigeon angels, but those are just thought-wave helmets. 

Whoa, I thought the misogyny in this issue was just going to be subtle, but this just got way over the top. Not cool, giant pigeon angle impersonators! But what do we think about Flip now? Is he off the hook for sparing her feelings, or should he be honest and tell her that the aliens are women-bashing in front of her? 

A thought about the architecture: at first these look like Earth skyscrapers, but if the natives are birds...what if these "buildings" are actually solid perches for the natives to roost on top of?

Nice...looks like I'm getting something cool for the Mobster Manual after all out of this issue. Heidites are D&D basilisk-like monsters, but instead of having a petrifying gaze attack, they exude green slime from their skin! From a D&D context, this potentially makes them even more dangerous than basilisks. 

Heck, I'm so excited, I just added it into the manuscript now! *sigh* Now to fix all the layout of the book after it...

 

Jumping ahead to Golden Knight, we have a lot of people in chainmail here. Except the girl, of course, who is for some reason in a 20th century bathing suit instead of even a dress. The chainmail is AC 5, but it exists almost as flavor text -- if you hit the target, you can stab right through the chainmail as if isn't there.

I had commented recently on a Facebook post about monster tactics in D&D that the DM has to have some latitude for deciding how advantageous to make those tactics, that the Editor had to stop short of making them so advantageous that the players will switch to the same tactics.

Here, we see entangling with nets giving great advantage. The Golden Knight, despite having a sword in hand, can apparently not cut his way out, or stab through the nets. Now, if this is simply a failed saving throw, and the player knows it, maybe this won't become his next character's main tactic. But if nets work like this every time? Then he will, and he'll expect it to always work for him too, and should. 

Other than that, what bothers me most about this page? The spaghetti straps on The Golden Knight's tabard? The Gothic style of the castle in medieval times? The fact that the castle is brightly painted all over? Okay, it's actually all three.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.) 

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 3

I know, I left you with a real cliffhanger last time. Would the Golden Knight really climb down the well? Well, he does, and it's a way loonier adventure than you ever would have expected at the start of this story!

The well has become an entrance to the underworld, and a deep entrance it is! The drop to that ledge looks like it would have been at least 40', so it's a good thing he was most of the way there when the rope snapped. That the cave mouth is at the level of the ledge suggests that this is level 1, with at least one more level further down.

The first set encounter on level 1 is a giant scorpion! And not just a realistic giant scorpion, but one with tentacle-like legs, no apparent stinger, and spins webs like a spider! Look out, there's two of them!

"Horde?" I only saw two. I wonder how many were watching from a distance and then failed their morale save...

That the constrictor snake encounter comes so fast on the heels of the scorpion battle suggests to me that it was a wandering encounter, attracted by the noise of the first combat.

And then we get more violence against animals. Oh joy...

Lava boils at a temperature of 1,292-2,192 degrees F. If Golden Knight failed that extremely risky leap, he would be taking about 6-24 points of damage from the heat alone, plus should probably be bumped up higher for the toxic fumes and suffocation damage -- so let's say he's risking 8-32 points of damage.

The Editor has a choice of game mechanics for the actual leaping. There is a skill check (I would call that an expert skill check, for leaping that far in heavy mail), or a save vs. science, or even something unofficial like a Strength check.

Things get even crazier on this page, as our hero encounters winged people who, from a medieval perspective, must look an awful lot like angels, yet GK has no compunctions against trying to kill them as soon as they come towards him. On the next page, which I didn't bother sharing, GK acts like the winged men attacked him first, but it sure doesn't look like it on this page.

Moving on, this is Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4. Comics.org's experts put question marks by who did this one, and it does look like a quick fill-in job by someone in the Eisner shop, but I'm not sure who either.

We've got a really unusual hideout design here, with a castle built into the side of a cliff (you can see the front of it on the next page), a standalone spiral staircase around a tall column in a really tall laboratory, a skylight-covered hangar above the castle, and a back door exit from the hangar in the cliff behind the castle.








Super-explosives are a dime-a-dozen in comic books already, but what's new is that we know how much this one is worth.

Now, there's a few really weird things about this page, and not just the ridiculously high entrance to the castle. One is that Terro has the audacity to test out the explosive on the village that is basically outside the front door to his castle. I mean, he is taking zero steps to conceal his involvement here, particularly since he just flew a plane from the castle over the village in broad daylight.

But more strangely, Yank leaves Washington, D.C. for Terro's castle before the wounded have all been taken away and, as you can see on the next page, before Terro's guests have even had time to leave. How close is that castle to Washington, D.C.? Does Yank have access to Samson's transporter?

"What?! That's absurd! How could you follow the painfully obvious clues leading here?"

Yank folds like a house of cards. Critical hit? Chance of stun from head blow? It doesn't have to be a surprise attack because he swings at Yank from right in front of him.

Terro's aviator look is pretty cool, and unusual for a mad scientist.

"Pell mell" is a rare term meaning "in a confused, rushed, or disorderly manner."

Yank was only stunned, hence his quick recovery.

The 2nd edition rules for grenades includes a note about catching them before they go off.

It's a little convenient that Terro just had to gas up his plane before takeoff, but what really doesn't make sense is using it on Von Garoff. Isn't it more useful for spies to follow other spies than to kill them?

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #4 - pt. 2

Picking up where we left off with Samson...it's a good thing Samson didn't kill off Professor Brun last time, because Brun has invented the transporter! Seriously, this works just like a Star Trek transporter dissembling and reassembling molecular structures in different places. It gets Samson from somewhere in eastern Europe to Russia at the speed of teleportation.

Wrecking a factory is in the category of battleships, out of range for superheroes level 1-4, but pretty easy for one of Samson's brevet rank-boosted level.

Decomposing ray? It's an unfamiliar use of the word, but it's not technically incorrect, if the ray is breaking Samson into his component molecules. But, on the return trip, should that be a synthesizing ray putting him back together?

That is it for this month's Samson adventure. Now, this month's Flip Falcon might look, on the surface, as if "Orville Wells" (actually Don Rico) was tripping on acid, but what he'd actually done was steep himself in pulp fiction, while at the same time anticipating science fiction to come.

First up, we've got atomic weapons and ray guns that do damage, but not the catastrophic damage we know atomic weapons really do.

The three-armed aliens anticipate Larry Niven's three-armed aliens, but also the many three-armed races of Professor Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne. It's hard to say what their magno suits and ray guns do, except in the general sense of providing better Armor Class and damage respectively. It also appears the suits let them fly.


"Dictascopic" isn't a word; Don may have meant "diascopic."

I've written before of the enigmatic slave-giants. They have mainly observed things before, anticipating Marvel Comics' Watchers, but at the size of Marvel's Celestials. Why this one throws them miles away, and arranges for them to somehow land safely, will never be revealed.

"We're lost, Adele. I don't recognize this place," has got to be the most remarkably understatement ever while floating through outer space.

It's very rare for a scientist to get something wrong in the comics, but this illustrates there is always a chance of failure.

The path has a Rainbow Bridge vibe to it, and the future men with their weak bodies reminds me of the Kaldanes from Thuvia, Maid of Mars. Their bodies are vulnerable, being little more than skeletons held together with skin, but the mechanical hands attached to their chairs are very effective as long as they are attacked one-on-one.

Up to five future men are encountered on this page. Although I'm calling them "future men" because of a plot twist that hasn't revealed itself yet, the story calls them "terrible things," "insane men,"and "dreadful claw men." 

For being a million years in the future, you'd think these guys would have more advanced traps than a portcullis.

"Life vest" seems accurate; the claw men (that one's starting to grow on me) don't seem to have enough organs left inside them to keep them alive without their protective vests.

So these guys have a time machine, but never thought to use it themselves?

I like the artwork on that second panel.

This is from Golden Knight, though you wouldn't guess that from the top tier, which shows a girl wearing an extremely anachronistic dress.

The father's curse is an intriguing one, but if he's powerful enough for a curse like that...why doesn't he have the power to just go down the well? Curses like that are plot devices, not covered by spells that player-controlled magic-users can learn.

Apparently all you needed was a stout rope to get down the well...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #3 - pt. 3

We return to Golden Knight as he's rushing indoors to face an ogre, the final guardian before the Holy Grail - er, "Golden Chalice." Kara the Merlin-Wannabe gets the Chalice, but it seems like Sir Richard has the better end of this deal, getting paid with a magic cloak that protects him from all harm (permanent Invulnerability power? That sure beats a Ring of Protection +5).

Now I'm going to jump ahead into Yank Wilson's story. "Alien dive," referring to foreigners, is here synonymous with "underworld dive."

When you're in an underworld dive, and you overhear anything, no matter how innocent sounding, it just has to be a big clue to something.

It's unclear how many thugs are present, but it appears that Yank and X-16 are "greatly outnumbered" by only three of them.

Swimming while handcuffed is something you can become an expert in, apparently (so, it's an expert skill check).

I thought this was clever strategy: make a lot of noise about searching the villain's room, and then be waiting around back to see who sneaks out, and trying to get what safely away. Could be an easy way to pick up trophy items!

 Liquid dissolvent -- something that needs to be added to the starting equipment list?

Space Smith vs. the Leopard Women of Venus. Actually, they may be kidnapped Earth women and not indigenous to Venus at all. And the only thing "leopardy" about them are the spots on their uniforms. Their Belts of Transmitting keep them safe in the vacuum of space. The rifles mounted on their hats are concussive ray rifles, with zero kickback that would knock their hats off, apparently.

Most interesting are the giant saurians -- giant lizard-like creatures 10' long with long claws, short tails, the ability to fly through the vacuum without Belts of Transmitting, and a movement rate that must be at least 23,300 (escape velocity from Venus). 

Giant saurians can be found in groups of up to 10 in their cave lairs on Venus. They must be stupid and easily confused, since they allow a fog cloud to foil them when they can easily move faster than than the fog. 

As weak and ineffectual as these Venusian robots are, I might stat them as the tin robots from 1st edition. The narrator makes a point of calling them clumsy, but if the Belt of Transmitting lets them fly even a fraction of a giant saurian's speed, then the robots are lucky to even get an attack on them as they whiz past (it would seem that robots cannot wear Belts of Transmitting, only living beings).

This is Captain Kidd, and it's hard to tell what spells this witch doctor is casting. When he just got done casting on Kidd's porters seemed to have been a Death spell. What he casts on Bennet seems to be a Command spell (I never would have thought of "choke" to be such an effective use of it though!).

The Magic Glass seems to allow magic-users to cast a spell of higher level than they could normally cast, since the Death spell is usually beyond most casters.

But this is all speculative until we read the rest of the story -- next time!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Fantastic Comics #3 - pt. 2

Moving on from Samson, this is Flick Falcon's feature.

"I must do it, Flick."

"Now, hold on, Adele," Flick should say. "We're 12 times the size of these jokers; we don't have to go along with any crazy scheme they come up with!"

As outlandish as it is to build a scenario around putting your supporting cast members in danger, Flick goes along with it.

That dress is the real reason Flick went along with this crazy scheme.

The carnicantileia is definitely going in the Mobster Manual. It appears to be a snake with a crocodile head.

Make that a giant snake with a crocodile head! That sucker must be 30' long, and possibly able to swallow humans whole.

This is Golden Knight, a feature that here decides that historical accuracy is boring and turns into a mix of Arthurian Grail myth and John Carter of Mars.

Kara the Magician, who has a girl name and poses suggestively towards Sir Richard in a short skirt, teleports him to an alien world to recover the Golden Chalice, that sounds remarkably like the Holy Grail. For just agreeing to go, he already gets a magic ring, but not what most players would consider a very powerful one. The Ring of Light sheds illumination like a lantern and can be used once per exploration turn to blind an opponent (saving throw allowed).

It's nice of the inhabitants of this other world to write in English (though, since magic is involved, perhaps it's just magically translated for Sir Richard).

It's also interesting that, aside from this fortress, there are no signs of intelligent life on this other world. The intelligent life must have been killed off (there are a lot of skeletons around).

Although not called such, this is the first hydra in comic books. It shows that hydras can start with as little as 3 heads, and that all but the main head grow back (I guess there's a random chance of lucking on the main head).

We've seen a lot of octopi in comics so far, but this is the first that has used its ink cloud offensively before entering combat.

Swimming in the magic pool triples one's strength. Tripling a Strength score doesn't work mechanically in Hideouts & Hoodlums; it makes more sense to have the pool magically bestow the Get Tougher power for an unknown duration.

Man, Sir Richard is really hungry! His first time seeing a giant bird, and his first thought is to eat it!

Now, I got excited when I saw those "birds" in panels 5-6 -- in silhouette they look like stirges!

Actually, they turn out to be "wild poison bats" (which I'll also be adding to the Mobster Manual). I'll be giving them 1 HD, poisonous bites, and horn damage. They also seem to be particularly vulnerable to fire and heat, since they just fly over the lava and die (+1 damage per die from heat or fire?).

That magical pool must have turned Sir Richard into a full-fledged superhero, as here he wrecks the wall to create his own secret door!

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)